Blesst Chest
Wish We Were There
Reviewed by: Max Miller
For all the effort that must go into making the millions of stock footage clips available for purchase across the internet, theirs is a medium meant to be ignored. Stock footage exists to fill space — probably no more than three or four seconds of it — during commercials or business presentations. These clips are designed to hold your attention, but just barely. Just for as long as it takes to reach the next bullet point or promotional offer. The vast majority of stock footage shows blandly handsome people smiling at each other, the camera or both. It’s so familiar, it hardly registers with our brains. Which is likely why, when divorced from any context, these clips become so surreal.
The music video for Blesst Chest’s “T-Boned in the Daewoo” is a montage of stock footage clips, their watermarks still visible. Throughout the video, the band starts inserting their own clips, which grow increasingly dark and absurd. But here’s the thing: When these clips first start to pop up in between legit ones, you can hardly notice the difference. The professionally produced shots of people mugging widely for the camera are somehow just as offputting as the band’s clips of people blowing up distant buildings or smiling as blood oozes from their foreheads.
Blesst Chest is an instrumental trio from Portland, OR, consisting of guitarist Darrell Bourque of the Joggers, bassist Jay Winebrenner of 31knots, and drummer Jake Morris of the Jicks. Just as the “Daewoo” video turns up the vertigo factor on reality a little bit, the music on Blesst Chest’s debut, Wish We Were There, takes a slew of mathy riffs and mashes them together in unexpected ways. Songs like “Sebedad” and “Def Gary” (which features another pleasantly hypnagogic music video) feel like obtusely-shaped spaceships constructed by children from disparate Legos.
First and foremost, Blesst Chest are compelling aestheticians. In addition to the aforementioned music videos, Wish We Were There features unsettling album artwork of characters from the ‘90s children show Bananas in Pyjamas* staring ominously at the viewer like the murdered twins from The Shining. The band also shows a knack for cheeky song titles. “Song For White Lion” centers around harmonized guitar melodies that would be right at home in a Thin Lizzy song, if not a tune by the titular Danish-American glam metallers. “YouTube Tutorial Soundtrack” is an ever-shifting morass of jazzy drum fills, Rush-like guitar lines and funky basslines, which would easily steal the spotlight from some monotone-voiced tutorial-maker.
Wish We Were There is an entertaining album, and its constantly-changing nature means Blesst Chest recall everything from the Fucking Champs and Budgie to Lightning Bolt and Return To Forever, all within the span of 35 minutes. However, for all the variation available to them, the formula of no formulas can sometimes grow stale. Although Blesst Chest touch on metal and jazz and classic prog, they limit themselves to an overall ‘00s math rock palette. Wish We Were There may just have been a fun one-off for this group of musicians, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if we hear more from Blesst Chest in the future, they’re going to need to make their music as zany and off-the-wall as their music videos and artwork.
Rating: Listenable
*As they spell it in Australia, which is where the show is from. Right? I didn’t know that either.
